


could be what you need

by antoineroussel



Series: cigarette daydreams [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, Brad Marchand is Trans and Trying His Best, Brief Sex Scenes, Crimes & Criminals, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Insecurity, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Polyamory, some deep shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 03:35:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11153403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antoineroussel/pseuds/antoineroussel
Summary: Pat kisses both of them goodnight, but Brad decides to sleep in the guest room for the first few weeks of officially living there, even though Adam is the one with his own apartment.Adam asks him why. “You two have been at it for a while. You deserve to be alone with him, and you need to sort some shit out,” he explains, and that doesn’t make any sense at all.





	could be what you need

**Author's Note:**

> well this happened
> 
> anyway so some notes  
> 1\. this won't make much sense as a standalone  
> 2\. this involves relatively bad people being portrayed sympathetically so  
> 3\. the violence in this isn't described in detail, and no main characters are seriously injured  
> 4\. please tell me if i need to add any warnings to this!!

The morning after isn’t as awkward or emotional as Adam thought it would be.

He wakes up first, listening to Patrice snore until he hears the front door creak open. His first instinct is to reach for a gun, but then he remembers that he isn’t in his own home. There’s still a gun in the side table that he knows of, but it’s unneeded.

“Anyone home? I have food,” Brad calls from downstairs. Adam doesn’t respond, burrowing further into the blankets. He doesn’t want anyone to see him like this. It seems to be a futile wish, because Brad comes up the stairs anyway, poking his head into the bedroom. “There you are,” he says, eyes sharp and bright as he sits on the bed beside them. Adam doesn’t pretend to be asleep. “We should go downstairs and talk,” he says. His tone is too happy for a statement like that. “Downstairs has bagels and coffee.”

That, he can agree to.

Adam stays quiet as they walk, and Brad helps him down the steps wordlessly. It doesn’t seem too much like talking. Once he’s sitting at the kitchen table, Brad finally sighs.

“I feel like Patrice is the only person who has his shit together here, you know?” Yeah. He does know. Adam nods emphatically, and Brad seems happy to have gotten through to him. “I don’t want him to have to be an adult for me, so here I am, being an adult. Do you want sugar?” Brad gets their coffee and lets Adam fix his own plate of food, a corner of his lip quirked as he looks on. “Patrice talks about you, but he hasn’t told me as much as he thinks he has,” he says, smiling. “What should I know about you and him?”

It sounds vaguely threatening. “What do you want to know?”

Brad senses his apprehension and touches his hand over the table. “Whatever you want to tell me. If you don’t tell me anything, there’s nothing I need to know.”

“Oh,” Adam breathes, and it’s sort of weird to hold hands with someone he doesn’t quite trust yet. But he can see why Patrice trusts him, and that’s almost enough. Brad is earnest and affectionate, likeable in a way that most mob guys aspire to be. He has the potential to be dangerous, and Adam feels like he wouldn’t use it, despite his better judgment telling him otherwise. “Our dads worked in the same area. We weren’t together much as children, but in middle school we got closer. It was probably around the time we figured out what they were doing with the businesses they owned,” He doesn’t miss being a teenager, but sometimes he’ll close his eyes and see Patrice sitting on the curb in front of some girl’s house party, smoking and laughing, and his chest will ache. Both of them were model students, aside from a brief drug-dealing stint, and even then, nobody questioned them, really. “We got involved ourselves around 17, working with his brother, and I’ve probably been in love with him since then,” The admission actually startles him with how clear it is now.

Brad isn’t shocked by this at all, apparently. “You’ve been together for a long time then,” he says, and Adam furrows his brows at that. “I mean, you’ve been with him every step of the way and vice versa, is my understanding.”

He nods. “Well, his family- you know, they aren’t… Has he told you?”

“They’re gone, yeah,” Brad continues, unfazed. “You were there for him too, from what he told me. You’re his best friend.”

Adam is almost uncomfortable with the praise. Nobody says that shit to him except for Patrice. He learned early not to expect praise from people, and it’s held true for the most part. “We took care of each other,” he says carefully, and Brad smiles, grazes his ankle with a socked foot. Adam can see himself getting used to this, and it’s kind of a problem.

“This would make a great soap opera, I think,” he says, and they both laugh.

 

-

 

Over the next few weeks, Brad slowly begins moving into Patrice’s house, which would seem passive-aggressive if Adam didn’t know any better. None of them question it, but Tuukka is side-eyeing Brad pretty hard. That ends quickly once Brad begins noticing it.

“All of you fucking North-Enders,” he says, shaking his head as he grabs two bottles of amber ale. “Listen, I’m like three feet shorter than all of you, and I just learned what scotch is, so if I’m intimidating, I’d hate to find out what your guys look like.”

There’s silence in the kitchen where a map of their assets is sprawled over the marble island.

Brad hands Adam one of the bottles, and looks around, grinning, as they all laugh. It’s a kind of cynical joke- the fact that paranoia is required of them to a certain extent. They know it isn’t reasonable.

Adam cracks the ale open with his teeth, still smiling, before he looks back at the group. “Now why the fuck do we have a blind spot near Bowdoin?”

There’s not a lot to do this month aside from reinforcements, and Adam spends a great portion of it at Patrice’s house. Brad tells him about his situation, that this kind of work seems more right than wrong. In his mind, they’re doing the city a favor. That’s an idealistic way of looking at it, but Adam isn’t going to tell him he’s wrong.

He’s a little younger than him and Patrice, and his family is fine, living in Halifax and calling him often. He went to college in Boston and never left, occasionally working with smaller gangs. He met Patrice after the fire alarm was pulled in his apartment complex, and seemed unbothered by the fact that the real estate agent in room 416 was just murdered.

“I remember that, actually,” Adam says while they’re sitting together on the couch. “The shot was Pat, but I think Torey pulled the alarm.”

Brad pinches the bridge of his nose, disbelieving. “I was walking past the room just as I heard the gunshot. The guy was pretty obvious about his less than savory business. It says a lot about me that my first instinct was to offer to walk him out. He was mildly charmed,” he recalls, and Adam can imagine it. Only Patrice could make a hit seem casual and come out with a witness on his arm. “I told the landlord he was a friend who was staying with me that night, and he didn’t think anything of it.”

“What did you think?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I was thinking. He put his number in my phone and said to text if I wanted dinner. I thought he was going to use me to get out of other shit situations, and I wasn’t too upset about it. He didn’t say anything about it, took me to a sports bar,” he says. It isn’t surprising that Patrice pulls so many people into his orbit so easily, but it’s still unsettling to think about. The only difference about Adam and Brad is that they’ve both pulled him in too. That’s even more unsettling. “He didn’t text me except to offer food and talk, and I thought maybe he was waiting, or buttering me up for some crazy shit. It’s not like that hasn’t happened before, you can probably guess what I did for money in college,” He says it- not quite bitterly, but almost like it’s a punchline for something.

Adam doesn’t really know what to say in response. “He wouldn’t tell you so much if he were. Most of his business partners don’t even know who he’s associated with.”

Brad looks him over. “Yeah, now I know better.”

 

-

 

Pat kisses both of them goodnight, but Brad decides to sleep in the guest room for the first few weeks of officially living there, even though Adam is the one with his own apartment.

Adam asks him why. “You two have been at it for a while. You deserve to be alone with him, and you need to sort some shit out,” he explains, and that doesn’t make any sense at all.

Later, Patrice fucks him, and he loves it, because he was right, Adam goes down easy for him. Nobody except Patrice would be able to dominate him so casually. It’s better than anything he’s ever had.

The problem is that even after a month of Patrice saying ‘I love you’ every other day (or so it seems), he still can’t believe it most of the time. He just isn’t made for that. Adam wishes he could say it’s the remnants of self-deprecation from before that night, but he still feels it as loud as ever. He couldn’t say that, tell Patrice he doesn’t believe him to his face, with all they’ve gone through together. He feels even more guilt for thinking it, and the cycle starts all over again.

This time, it comes in the form of tears. When they’re fucking, and he has his face ducked into Patrice’s shoulder. He tries to be quiet, but that’s even easier to notice, because otherwise he’d be wailing. Pat stills, obviously waiting for him to speak or to get some kind of explanation for the silence.

Adam is so embarrassed, he doesn’t even know what to do. He opens his mouth and a distinctly  _ bad  _ whimpering noise spills over without his permission, then it’s just a fucking mess from there on out. He doesn’t make a sound, just tears and convulsive, heaving breaths, but Patrice lets him go, laying flat on the bed. He blinks away the worst of his blurry vision and finally looks at Patrice directly, humiliated and resentful, because he didn’t want to be like this, didn’t want to give him a reason to stop wanting Adam around. He doesn’t know what he expects to see on Patrice’s face.

He certainly doesn’t expect to see absolute terror in his eyes. 

He has his hands on either side of Adam’s head still, and he looks more scared than Adam has ever seen him, more scared than he was at his brother’s funeral, knowing he was supposed to be next in line. He’s shaking when he reaches for Adam’s hand.

“Are you okay?” he asks, too quiet for his natural voice, and it breaks a little. “Did I hurt you?”

He’s so afraid. Adam shakes his head emphatically, even though he’s crying harder with the guilt. Patrice would never hurt him. Adam can’t let him think that for one second, doesn’t want him to be scared. He’s never been anything but confident, and it feels horrible to break that.

He gets their boxers, slinking back like he’s not sure if he should get back into bed with Adam. He eventually does, holding him as well as he can with Adam’s legs being too long to really be anywhere besides folded under him. He doesn’t understand why he can’t just be happy. He has Patrice, and it’s not like his life is lacking in a lot of other areas either. He’s just too fucked up to enjoy it.

“What happened?” Patrice asks him once he stops sobbing. He doesn’t know what happened. 

“I’m- It’s okay, you didn’t do anything,” he says, as steady as he’s able. “I just don’t get how you- how I deserve this,” Patrice seems confused for a moment, but his face goes slack with understanding after a beat. He studies Adam closely. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be. I’m sorry that I can’t do anything about it,” Patrice tells him, calm now, but his blank expression is tinged with unease. He hates that. “I’ll try to help, at least.”

Adam thinks he gets what Brad was saying earlier. He always just fantasized about having his feelings returned, and never about what he would do after that happened, because he didn’t think it  _ would _ happen.

There’s a distinct moment where wishful thinking gets the best of him, and he imagines what the likelihood is that Patrice’s worst fear is him getting hurt.

 

-

 

At some point, he and Brad sitting on the couch becomes he and Brad kissing on the couch. It should be more of a jolt, but Adam thinks it was a long time coming. It’s ironic how he has trouble believing that Patrice, his best friend for years, has feelings for him, yet has little to no qualms with Patrice’s boyfriend coming onto him. Adam thinks he can safely consider Brad his friend as well though. They know each other.

Brad kisses him hard, lets Adam rock up against his thigh. “He loves you,” he says, breathless, then ducks his head to nip at Adam’s throat. “What’s not to love?” He doesn’t know why, but the statement has Adam wrapping his arms around Brad’s middle and burying his face in his chest. He’s embarrassed by it, but not unpleasantly. It’s easier to take compliments from Brad, who has no real reason to play nice with him (in fact, has many reasons not to.) It’s just that he has many answers to that question.

He doesn’t mention it. Brad lets him take what he wants, and he comes in his boxers, breath stifled as his hands tremble where they’re clenched in the fabric of Brad’s shirt. Adam, after a moment of recovering, brushes along the hem of his sweatpants, silently asking to help him.

“Honey,” Brad says serenely, takes his hands away and kisses his fingertips. Adam is too distracted with thoughts that he might be imagining this to offer again.

That happens a few times, although he doesn’t try to do anything for Brad after the first dismissal. He wants to, but he thinks that maybe Brad isn’t ready to get closer to him, or doesn’t like being touched, both of which are fair reasons. After the fourth time, Adam does try again, toying with the laces of Brad’s sweats. He just wants to know for sure.

“You want to get me off?” He nods, and Brad kisses his forehead. “But your arm’s hurt,” And well, that’s true. Earlier in the week he’d done something to his wrist while lifting some boxes out of a storage unit, and Patrice has pretty much babied him since then. It doesn’t make much sense though; Adam’s been literally shot on multiple occasions. There must be a despondent look on his face because Brad squeezes his shoulder. “Alright, I shouldn’t be stalling, I just need to tell you something first,” he says, and Adam lays his head on his hip, listening carefully. “I don’t have a dick, so if that’s gonna freak you out, we might want to stay like this.”

“That doesn’t freak me out at all,” Adam insists immediately, but his gaze wanders once he actually absorbs the information. It takes him a moment to even figure out what that means. His eyes flicker back up after a beat. “Let me.”

Brad grins, thumbs at his bottom lip. “Yeah?” 

Adam eats him out, tongue probably clumsy with nerves and inexperience, and Jesus, he’s thirty years old; he should be less easily flustered by now. Brad alternates between tugging and petting Adam’s hair, doesn’t seem to notice his hesitance. It isn’t important anyway. Brad sighs in approval, murmuring gentle praise as he goes, and that takes some of the tension out of Adam’s shoulders, but it still seems to be a while before Brad is arching his hips and coming.

“Sorry,” is the first thing out of his mouth when he comes up. It’s awkward, but he feels like it’s necessary.

Brad stares down at him, lashes lowered. “For what, baby?” His hand is still in Adam’s hair, scratching softly at his scalp. Pet names shouldn’t make him feel so important, but he can’t help the rush that comes with hearing one.

Adam lets the couch conceal his face and muffle his voice. His jaw aches. “I haven’t done that before now.”

“It doesn’t seem like it,” Brad lifts his chin and studies him carefully. “I always take a long time,” he adds when he’s met with a skeptical look. He sits Adam up and settles in his lap, massaging his jaw when the stiffness becomes apparent. “You were so good,” he coos. “Trust me.”

Adam is a bit scared to realize that he does.

 

-

 

Early one morning, Brad crawls into Patrice’s bed while he’s out getting breakfast with an associate. Adam is the only one there, and he lies there stiffly until Brad acknowledges him. “Do you like sleeping here?” he asks, uncolored by any emotion.

Yes, he wants to say, it’s the only sleep he doesn’t wake up from every ten minutes. “I don’t know.”

Brad hums thoughtfully without another word and peels the blanket back to suck Adam off, firm and efficient. It doesn’t take him long, and he reaches to return the favor but Brad gently swats his hands away. “Can I take a picture of you?” Adam nods, but he pulls the sheets back over him, just a little bit. “You look so cozy,” Brad says, grinning as he takes a photo (which seems to be of Adam’s face more than anything else) and types something out. “Can I send this to Patrice? He’ll be so jealous.”

He agrees easily- Patrice knows they’ve been fucking around, and a few days back he heard Brad on the phone with him talking about Adam’s mouth, which was sort of mortifying but validating. His eyes flicker down to Brad’s phone dubiously. “What would he be jealous about?”

“I get to spend my morning with you, and he has to spend his with some crusty rando,” he says simply, working his way under the covers with his phone still in hand.

“That crusty rando is from Suffolk Construction and is offering him a good share in his stocks, so he’s probably more than alright with it,” Adam argues, because he knows the meeting is important enough to have been scheduled- even though Patrice schedules everything.

“Nope, he’s absolutely devastated. Can’t believe he’s missing your post-orgasm glow for this tomfoolery. He’s in the middle of an IHOP and the server probably forgot to put maple syrup on the table, he’s frankly suffering,” Brad tells him evenly, and shoves one arm under the pillow, clearly getting comfortable. Adam is irritated at his insistence, wants to fight it, but they meet eyes and he almost understands. He’s arguing that a breakfast with a new business partner is more important to Patrice than he is, and Brad is calling him on his shit. Adam loses the staredown, averting his eyes to the ceiling at the realization with a bit of shame. The sting of defeat is lessened when Brad tugs him in for kisses, which slowly devolves into just nuzzling his cheek and sometimes worrying Adam’s lip between his teeth. It’s- he needs that. Adam needs for someone to fight him on it. “You want to just stay in bed? I asked Patrice to get lunch.”

He nods, face wedged under Brad’s chin. The phone buzzes between them. Brad unlocks it and reads the text to himself, then hands it to Adam. “See, he says he wants me to keep you in bed anyway.”

Adam blinks, looking between the picture of himself and Patrice’s reply, complete with a few heart emojis. He drops the phone on Brad’s chest and stays quiet, curling back up the way he was before. 

It seems like he drifts for a while, because the next time he looks up, Patrice is loosening his tie at the foot of the bed with Brad in his lap. Something twists in his stomach looking at them. He isn’t jealous, it’s just that Brad fits so much better in Patrice’s arms than he does. He pulls the sheets further up around him and neither of them notice. Adam feels like he shouldn’t be here.

“How did the meeting go?” Brad asks, hushed.

“He gave me a shareholders’ agreement to look over, so it should be interesting,” he answers, almost cryptically. Patrice doesn’t like making a big production during negotiations. They’ll celebrate only when it’s said and done. “Adam should look it over before I do anything.”

Brad makes a face, swatting at his chest. “Okay, but don’t let me hear that be the first thing you say to him.”

Patrice gives him an indignant look. “Of course not,” And Brad seems to approve of that, letting him go to wake Adam up. He closes his eyes- by this point, he’s expert at pretending to be asleep, especially around Patrice. When their fathers worked together, he used to sleep over at the Bergerons’ house, forcing his eyes shut even when Patrice was inches away from him. He even stayed with them when his relationship with his dad got too much to handle. Patrice’s mother made him tea when he couldn’t get any real sleep. 

Adam never told him how much their deaths affected him too.

Thinking about it, he almost flinches when Patrice leans over to kiss him awake, but he manages to stay still until he thinks it’s appropriate to shift and let his eyes flutter open. Patrice presses his lips to Adam’s jaw, pulling him closer. “Love you,” he murmurs. Adam wraps his arms around Patrice’s shoulders and lets himself be pulled into sitting. His stomach unknots itself quickly after that. “You looked so nice this morning,” Patrice tells him. Adam just accepts it. 

They spend the rest of the morning in bed, Adam struggling to remember he has to breathe between kisses from both of them.

 

-

 

As is typical of him, Adam ends the day with an injury.

It’s usually something self-inflicted. It’s even become somewhat of an inside joke among their inner circle that nobody can hurt Adam but himself. Patrice only finds it funny some of the time. It would be true if it weren’t for two bullet wounds, but those were both a long time ago. He’s surprised he hasn’t accidentally shot himself in the foot yet.

Now, this one isn’t so bad. With the adrenaline rush of having a gun held to his head, the broken hand isn’t really on his mind. The man who is responsible for both of those is tragically untrained, and in all honesty, quite a mess. He’s obviously strung out on something, Adam doesn’t know what, but he does know that this is a prime reason why solitary criminals don’t belong in the mob. The guy has no idea what he’s doing. Adam texts Patrice the address of the building singlehandedly while he waves his pistol around on some tirade. Patrice knows he isn’t on any job, and therefore that the threat is low. He was just going to check up with the nearby butcher shop for any information on the new businesses popping up in the area, but it appears the main butcher skipped town.

When Patrice opens the door to the back office and shoots this guy in the arm, Adam can’t help but be relieved, for so many reasons. He immediately stands up and takes the gun from the yowling man, unloading the magazine with a bit of difficulty. He puts it on a shelf for safe-keeping, and Patrice closes the door behind them, muffling the man’s curses.

“My hand is broken,” Adam says once they’re sitting in the car. Patrice nods tightly and pulls off for Massachusetts General Hospital. “Do you think whatever he was on would slow his breathing?”

Patrice glances at him. “Not enough to let him bleed out. How are you holding up?”

He stares at his hand, which looks kind of crooked, but it isn’t as bad as it could be. He just needs to stay still. “I’m okay. It doesn’t feel serious. Do you think the owner was talking to other groups? As far as I know, he never guessed that I was more than a businessman.”

“Keep your wrist straight,” he says gently, and Adam does. “I don’t know.”

The rest of the drive is silent. When Patrice parks the car, Adam starts to get out, but a hand falls to rest on his shoulder. He turns back for an answer, and Patrice kisses him hard, his good hand trapped between them and the injured one resting on his collarbone. He reminds himself not to flex it, even as the kiss becomes desperate. Adam thanks God for tinted windows.

Patrice ends up sitting in the waiting room for an hour while he gets looked over and given a splint. When Adam comes out, Patrice is talking to a teary-eyed woman with a baby in her arms, and she laughs at something he says, sniffling right after even as she smiles. He sees Adam coming over and lets the baby squeeze his finger before coming over to meet him. 

Adam feels a sort of empty sympathy for anyone who crosses him. Patrice, by his own nature,  _ breeds  _ loyalty. He sweeps across the waiting room and kisses Adam’s cheek, waves to the woman before they leave- perfectly charming.

Despite the day not being horribly traumatizing, he still breathes easier once they walk into Patrice’s house. He knows he’s safe here. Just the scent of the air freshener is comforting. Brad looks up from the couch where he’s reading and beckons Adam forward, kissing him- desperately, like Patrice had in the car- once he’s close enough.

“Christ, can you not be alright for one moment?” he huffs. Adam’s shoulders go tight again, and his mood falls a bit. It isn’t Brad’s fault; he just hates that he disappoints them. Maybe Patrice is upset too, and just doesn’t want to tell him, doesn’t want him to know-

“Uh,” His voice breaks as he tries to find something to say. Brad reaches for him, and Adam shrugs his hand off, feeling even worse when his eyes go wide at the rejection. “I’m, um, sorry.”

Brad practically jumps up off the couch. “No, you’re- honey, it’s okay. Why don’t you sit down? I’ll get you a blanket,” He heads upstairs without another word, and Adam does as he’s told. While Brad’s gone, Patrice comes over with vicodin and a glass of water. He frowns.

“You’re shaking a little. Is the pain setting in?” Adam takes the pill and doesn’t answer his question.

Brad comes back a moment later, when Patrice is ordering takeout. He keeps his distance on the couch once he hands over a throw blanket from upstairs. He flips through channels idly. Adam forces himself to scoot over and puts his head on Brad’s shoulder, a sort of peace offering. Brad takes this as an invitation to hug him almost too tightly. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. I was just worried, and I shouldn’t have said shit,” He strokes Adam’s cheek with the back of his knuckles. “I’m just glad you’re home.”

“Not your fault,” he says.  _ Glad you’re home,  _ his mind emphasizes. “Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> patrice: i love you  
> adam: sounds fake but okay
> 
> talk to me @ antoineroussel.tumblr.com


End file.
